256 K. T. HILL — PELE AND THE WINDWARD ARCHIPELAGO 



by various eruptions in times past. The age of the volcano is also 

 attested by the excessive erosion of the slopes of the volcanic pile and 

 the truncation of its sea borders. Thus, even though historic evidence 

 were wanting, it is apparent that this volcanic chimney of Pele is very 

 old, and that it, as well as the whole island of Martinique, is merely the 

 surface ash pile around the chimney or vents of an interior volcanic 

 center, which is a permanent feature, regardless of surface changes. 



The summit pile was built up considerably by the recent eruption. 

 These new ash layers were built in turn on the top of a still older one. 

 The whole mountain and island in fact, partly terrestrial and partially 

 submerged (its gradient extending beneath the waters far beyond the 

 present margins of the island), were thus constructed around vents which 

 originally opened at sea bottom, 2 miles beneath the altitude of the 

 present higher summits. 



The orifice or chimney of this plutonic mechanism, as is usual with 

 the termination of volcanic conduits, has shifted locally for short dis- 

 tances in the course of its history, but its location has so persisted, within 

 a circumscribed radius above the deeper seated permanent furnace, that 

 it may practically be considered a fixture, although the limits Of its field 

 of outbreak in times past have been coincident with the area of the present 

 island of Martinique. 



The entire island, as well as its submerged planed off Windward bench, 

 thus covers an area where volcanic orifices have persistently, though in- 

 termittently, opened above one continual deep-seated volcanic center, the 

 vents of which clogged up at the surface after each eruption, but broke 

 out again at some slightly different but nearby place at the next eruption. 



Thus it has happened in times past that the mornes of Martinique, 

 notably those of Pele, the Pitons du Carbet, and many others now worn 

 down, have recorded at several outlets the eruptions above a common 

 interior source. Therefore Pele protrudes above a persistent interior 

 volcanic mechanism which has existed beneath the island of Martinique 

 farther back in human time than we are able to conceive, and in geo- 

 logical time at least to the Cretaceous period. 



In other words, Pele and the whole island of Martinique, to use a 

 medical figure, is a subcutaneous trouble beneath the skin of the earth, 

 which tends to break out occasionally at the surface within an area of 

 circumscribed limitations. The present crater of Pele represents the acute 

 manifestation and the rest of the island the scar of former activity. 



PELE A TYPE OF THE VOLCANIC BATTERY OF THE WINDWARD ARCHIPELAGO 



But this greater, deeply concealed interior mechanism of Pele, whose 

 ash piles around its vent holes constitute the mass of the island, is in 



